Data objects in general are described by properties. A property of a data object, such as a product, may be “color”, and its value may be “red”. Different standardization organizations provide standardized object models to define characteristics of certain data objects. For instance, the International Standardization Organization (ISO) publishes standardized object models comprising standardized properties. However, any other standardization of any standardization organization or institute is within the scope of the invention. The standardized properties may define elements of data objects, such as data type, and values of the properties.
When describing data objects within an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software using standardized object models, however, standardized properties lack information needed by business processes based on properties and their use in classification. Mapping properties and/or attributes of the respective business processes into the standardized data sets might not be possible as the business process has requirements, which may not be accounted for in the standardized object model. Insofar, standardized data models provide inflexibility with respect to the business process to be reproduced.
On the other hand, when using non-standardized properties or attributes to describe business processes, inter-company communication lacks interoperability. Proprietary properties defined for one business process might not fit onto a data model of a different business process. This lack of interoperability may result in manual transfer of information between different business processes, such as, for instance, different companies, or different software elements within one company.
The current data object models are inflexible with respect to standardized properties as well as inefficient with respect to data exchange between different organizations or business processes.